1 Ì Portland Observer Blitz legacy; Agricultural revolution by Peter Wiley (PNS) Earl Butz may be remembered today for his ethnic jokes, his attacks on food stamp recipients and the $150,000 dining room be built at the Department of Agriculture during the height of the world food crisis. But he will go down in history as the man who oversaw the most dramatic change in U.S. farm policy since the New Deal and the biggest jump in food prices - 45 per cent in the last four years - in recent memory. Under Butz's stewardship the USDA: •eliminated taxpayer-financed price- support programs that had idled 38 million acres at a cost of $4 billion annu­ ally, •pushed farm exports to their resnet all-time high of $22 billion, making farm exports the single largest item in U.S. trade; •drastically reduced the Pood for Peace program: a foreign-aid effort, set up in the wake of World War II, to help poorer nations and get rid of U.S. sur pluses; •took on an unprecedented role in foreign policy by pushing the use of the U.S.’s massive food supply as a diplo­ matic weapon in international power struggles. When Butz went to Washington in 1971 from his post as dean of agricultural sciences at Purdue University, he took charge of the nation's biggest - and the one, outside of defense and aerospace, most heavily dependent on public funds and government control and direction. Butz, a firm believer in modern agri business and the free market, vowed to reduce the role of the government and revive the power of the market in the food business. The food system that he inherited was still under the control of policies devised during the Roosevelt New Deal and the immediate post-war years. These policies were designed to deal with vast food surpluses produced by a smaller and smaller number of U.S. farms. A t home farmers were paid not to plant all their acres. And surplus production was dumped overseas through aid pro­ grams. both direct giveaways and sub­ sidies, to make food available to less than market price. Butz argued that these programs re­ duced the efficiency of U.S. farms, raised prices and coat the taxpayer roughly $4 billion a year. Pushing “trade not aid,” his first efforts were directed at procuring new markets for U.S. food overseas. He succeeded brilliantly with the now famous 1972 Soviet grain deal, the largest such transaction in history. Massive sales to Russia and other communist countries are now a regular feature of the U.S. grain trade, and overall food exports have more than doubled since 1972. In turn the U.S.’s improved trade picture, which is depend ent on these sales, has vastly improved the international standing of the dollar. The grain sales plus the elimination of U.S. grain reserves, another Butz scheme, drove wheat prices - and the price of bread and grain fed meant - skyward. In 1973 prices rose 20 per cent. According to a New York Times estimate, this one deal coat consumers close to $5 billion on their grocery bills. In addition, massive grain sales con centrated greater power in the hands of the huge grain exporters, two of whom control half of U.S. grain exports. Later Butz identified the growing share of the food dollar going to middlemen -- processors, exporters, distributors and commodity speculators - as the main cause of higher food prices. The Soviet grain deal coincided with a worldwide reduction in food output and the onset of famine particularly in Africa, but Butz contineud to push sales and reduce foreign aid - "giving the stuff away,” as he called it. This led to a bitter attack on the U.S. at the 1974 Rome Food Conference, where third world nations condemned the U.S. for failing to meet its responsibili­ ties. Butz's response sparied further con­ troversy: “Some people are always starv ing somewhere." Meanwhile, the shrinking food aid dollar was being distributed according to principles of food as a diplomatic weapon advocated by Butz and the CIA. For a time aid was increased dramatically to the failing pro-U.S. regimes of Vietnam and Cambodia. More recently, the U.S. has sent its aid to the pro-U.S. junta in Chile and to the Middle Eastern nations of Syria, Jordan and Egypt in hopes of influencing the diplomatic situation situation there. History of Controversy Butz's administration was surrounded by controversy from the start. A t his nomination hearing, his appointment was almost blocked when‘consumer and small farm groups accused him of being an agent of giant agribusiness corporations. They pointed to his directorship and stock holdings in a number of large cor­ porations, including Ralston-Purina, J.I. Seminar teaches job search A seminar to teach Vietnam veterans how to get jobs they want will be held in Portland, Wednesday, November 17th, from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.. at the Pacific Power & Light Auditorium, 920 S.W. 8th Avenue. Sonny Jepson, director of the Portland office of the National Alliance of Busi­ nessmen, said the seminar will offer Vietnam veterans an opportunity to learn from businesamen and employment ex­ perts how to get the jobs and information they w ant “Y-